The initial shots of the Ferrari F12berlinetta looked suspiciously re-touched for our liking, so some live shots were a necessity before making any final judgement on the car. If you ask me, it looks even better without excessive rendering.
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Category: Sales
Everyone expecting there would be some kind of droptop Aventador – after all, what’s the point of a supercar if the people who bullied you in high school can’t see how rich and successful you are? But we weren’t expecting this.
In 1998, Britney Spears launched a thousand ephebophilc ships with her seminal work – the music video for “Hit Me Baby One More Time“. Featured in the video was a Land Rover Defender – the only reason I know this is because I wasn’t interested in girls when the song came out. Now that I’m much older, I can understand the hidden subtext; Land Rover needs another ragtop SUV!
Take a good long look at the Bentley EXP 9F. When I asked a few months ago what the next rapper car du jour will be, I didn’t know that a Bentley SUV was coming. Now that I do, expect this to be everywhere that rappers, athletes and plastic-fantastic housewives are, stealing the Maserati Kubang’s thunder with a perverse status display.
Major carmakers around the world had their eyes on Hyundai’s growing muscle for a while. In the business, you call that benchmarking. Now, the benchmarking sensors sound alarm: Hyundai announced yesterday that its February global sales jumped 28 percent from a year earlier. Read More >
TTAC’s “Two Minutes Hate” was nearly torpedoed today – our best story was about a “wealth manager” and an Audi RS5. It turns out that we have some real news with which to aim our invective; GM is suspending Volt production again to eliminate excess inventory.
It looks like the German new car market decided: “Last year was nice. Let’s do it again.” For a few months, the German market had retraced the prior year. In February, the prior year number has been hit with 0.0 percent precision. Read More >
The Ford Focus Electric has been rated by the EPA at 105 MPGe combined (99 MPGe on the highway and 110 MPGe in the city), with a range of 76 miles.
When Toyota announced an ambitious sales plan for 2012, and the intention to raise sales in Japan by 36 percent, a common reaction was: “Excuse me?”
In February 2011, sales of passenger vehicles excluding minivehicles had been down 14.3 percent. Sales in Japan had been down for most of the year, as a result of cut subsidies. When smaller inducements came back in fall, sales were up again. We are comparing with a low base. As matters are coming back to normal we better get used to a stretch of double digit gains.
Compared to the low base, Toyota’s plan is entirely doable. So far, the market complies and Toyota is on target. Read More >
General Motors sold 1023 Chevrolet Volts in February of 2012, but production figures totaled 2,347 units. Uh oh.
Audi fanboys who want emissions-free motoring will be sorely disappointed; the pilot program to try out an A3 E-Tron, will be limited to Audi personnel in Denver, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and San Francisco.
For between 12 and 18 months, employees will evaluate the A3 e-tron, before an electric A3, based on the next-generation car, debuts in 2014. Unlike BMW and Mini, customers won’t be providing data to Audi to help develop the car, like with the test programs involving the Mini E and BMW 1ActiveE.
We’re still waiting to get the final February sales numbers on all automakers, but one emerging story is that the Ford Focus has finally outsold its domestic rival, the Chevrolet Cruze.
Throughout 2011 and January 2012, the Cruze led the Focus, with the Chevy beating the Ford last year by a substantial margin (231, 860 units for the Cruze versus 175,709 for the Focus). Last month the Cruze did 15,049 units versus 14,440 for the Focus. This month, independent analyst Timothy Cain is reporting that the Focus finally bested the Cruze. Chevrolet moved 20,427 Cruzes versus 23,350 for the Blue Oval’s small car.
Ford is touting a 115 percent year-over-year gain for the Focus, having sold 10,879 Foci in February 2011, but their fleet percentage back then, according to TrueCar, was just 1.6 percent.. One year later, it’s closer to 20 percent. February wasn’t even over when Ford started sending out press releases claiming that Focus sales are on pace to double this month compared to February of 2011. With reports of Ford Focus fleet sales hovering around 45 percent, we thought that it would be worthwhile to look at the fleet/retail breakdown for the Focus and Cruze in 2011, as a means of providing a bit of context . Read More >
If you are thinking of buying some stock of an automaker, now could be a good time. Not because of the strong sales. Because of dropping incentives, paired with strong sales. This indicates a strong first quarter, which should drive up stock prices. Read More >
February sales are coming in stronger than expected, indicating a post-Presidents Day boom. Chrysler and Volkswagen lead the charts with a 40 and 43 percent gain over February 2011. Read More >
First new car sale numbers are coming in for February, and they are better than the most optimistic projections. Chrysler Group is up 40 percent, with the sales of Chrysler branded cars up a whopping 114 percent. GM did beat expectations by registering a small 1.1 percent gain on 209,306 units sold in February. Analysts had expected a drop of GM sales by several percent. Read More >
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